we inverse insurgents (we are like wreckage in the sands)
by Shadows of a Dream
Summary: 1. Anakin Skywalker was a Sith at heart; Kylo Ren is a Jedi. 2. Luke Skywalker was a hero, forced to scavenge for life; Rey is a scavenger, her fear like an ocean. 3. Han Solo was a good man stained with questionable deeds; Finn is a villain, redemption like a new suit of armor. 4. Leia Organa was unexpected; Poe Dameron is presumed. (A quintuplet of character studies/comparisons.)
1. Shadow, Starlight

Anakin Skywalker, better known as Darth Vader, was never very good at being a Jedi. He loved too fiercely, desired to deeply – demanded where others merely hoped, and charged with life what others were content to leave as skeleton. A Jedi could never have brought balance to the Force, what with their stubborn silencing of passion, their insistence on isolation, their creeping fear of anything beyond their temple's walls. A Sith, on the other hand, would flash like lightning, the Light Side answering with thunder as the boundary lines came crashing down.

There is something of the Sith in Darth Vader's ruined eyes when he hurls his master (finally) into oblivion, something of the Sith in his quivering hands that all but refuse to relinquish his son as he slips away. He is a dark vanguard, a shadow of completeness, and so Anakin Skywalker knows he must pass away.

(There is no more room in the galaxy for such darkness as thrives in his blood.)

Kylo Ren, better known as Ben Solo, is far from talented at being a Sith. There is tenderness at his white-hot core: a father's dead fingers that wipe his tears, a mother's foolish comforts that plague his nightmares, a scavenger swept like a broken dream into his arms even as he transports her to torture.

A Jedi, he knows, could never be greater than Snoke's looming mass, what with their constant shrinking into themselves, dissolving into the Force instead of making it a sword at their command. Only a Sith could be stronger than the Supreme Leader, but Ben Solo is even weaker than the scavenger – she scars his face like Asajj Ventress once scarred his father's, an etched reminder of how weakly he plays this elaborate game of pretend.

(There is no more room in the galaxy for such shadow as he seeks.)

Anakin Skywalker was a Sith at heart, thinly cloaked in the robes of the Jedi – more machine than man before he ever lost at limb, more at home with a droid than a friend.

Kylo Ren is a Jedi desperately donning the mantle of the Sith, willing his stubborn flesh to become metal, wishing his mortal face would melt into his feral mask – molding compassion into hollow passion that will never leave him satisfied.


	2. Skywalker, Scavenger

Tatooine was never home for Luke Skywalker. He was never content to be driven by the winds, tossed about like the sands; he anchored himself with a stubborn dream, and clung to it like the twin suns to their horizon. Given a lifetime to tinker with droids, he would never have been fulfilled with being a creator – he wanted to be a created thing, a child of dusty legends and impossible stories, carved in trial and tempest. He wanted to leap headlong into the Force and all it might unleash.

(It was more than he bargained for.)

Jakku is the only home Rey has ever known, or cares to know. She swallows all other possibilities like quicksand, burying hope of the beyond so deep that she'll never find it again, if all goes according to plan. The sands may shift, but here she'll stay. The galaxy may crumble to ashes, but certainly her family will return. So she lives in skulls of someone else's war, building peace out of the wreckage, with no interest in setting her face to the winds and walking into a storm.

(The storm will walk into her, instead, so much more than she bargained for.)

Luke Skywalker was always a hero, forced to scavenge for flashes of the life he ought to be living, wild with the will to escape small conflicts for true challenges.

Rey is a scavenger whose calloused palm trembles against a hero's fabled sword-hilt, her fear like an ocean around a faint blue-white flame of faith.


	3. Smuggler, Stormtrooper

Han Solo had a heart of gold under his vest of black. That being said, he had a quick trigger-finger to answer anyone who questioned his character – but as time wore on, and as medals weighed increasingly heavy around his neck, that happened less and less. He preferred conflict to questions, recklessness to forethought, but when he started something, he finished it – and when he kissed the princess, it was a promise he meant to keep.

(He loved her every second of her absence, loved her every heartbeat spent on the boy who refused to come home.)

Finn emblazons himself with titles like _Resistance_ , like _friend,_ but the brands beneath his skin go deeper: numbers where a name should be, instincts where desire should be, an empty cavern where he thinks some sort of expectation ought to live. He wasn't trained to expect; he was programmed to execute.

(The marrow of his bones knows what it is to kill, but his hand freezes on the trigger every time he tries to silence this slow sickness they've built into his veins, this automatic acquiesce to what someone else wants him to be.)

Han Solo was always a good man, albeit stained with questionable deeds, careful to wash his hands clean before he offered them to a princess for the rest of his life.

Finn is a villain for whom redemption is like a new suit of armor – one that fits too snugly, makes him itch and squirm and sweat, his First Order uniform still trapped beneath it, the helmet bright with blood-stripes.


	4. Silencer, Silenced

They told Leia Organa she would be a princess, so she watched her kingdom burn to ash in a permanent instant of pain. They told her she would be proper, so she ran away with a smuggler. They told her she would be a symbol, beautiful, to grace the battles' sidelines, so she positioned herself face-to-face with a Dark Lord, and refused to bend.

They told her she would be valuable; instead, she made herself indispensable.

A generation later, they tell Poe Dameron, child of the Resistance, that he'll surely be a pilot, so that's who he becomes. Before he can crawl, he falls asleep in his father's X-wing helmet. As his imagination grows, so do the space battles he enacts on his bedroom floor, plastic fighters warring over plastic systems, plastic planets, plastic people.

(Where Leia was made of glass, he'll someday realize he's made of plastic, too… something built on an assembly line, not born of sheer demand.)

They tell Poe Dameron he'll be unprecedented, so he shatters every flight record. They tell him he can fly anything, and he believes them, so he does. They tell him he'll change the world with the click of a trigger, and as he soars clear of Starkiller Base, the dream is so irrevocably real it makes tears spring to his eyes.

They tell him he'll be unforgettable; instead, he becomes dismissible, because it's a war that forges fighters, but a good fighter always ends the war.

Leia Organa was always unexpected – casting false presumptions aside with the ease of someone more closely bound to the future than the past, bound up in the very fabric of the Force.

Poe Dameron is presumed, puffed up, pretentious, built on public praise and renown – and when he trades his X-wing fighter helmet for a pillow that night, Starkiller's absence like a black hole in the stars, he isn't sure who he is without something to fight.


End file.
